Goya’s black paintings
The Gods Goya made pressure and terrify into reflection. They point out the flaws in man, and when viewing them one reflects on their own. Goya being human, had his flaws. One of the black paintings, ‘ The Seductress, ’ depicts a woman thought to be his mistress Leocadia Weiss, leaning on a grave. 8 It is possible the grave is that of his wife who died years earlier. The woman’s casual pose suggests that Goya felt this relationship was a disrespect to his dead wife, and the mother of his child. Critic Jay Scott Morgan looked closely at the artist’s r elationship with his son, including the pressure he put on the young man to follow him as an artist. 9 In his essay on Saturn devouring one of his sons Scott Morgan outlines Goya’s worry, as a father, at the thousand little things one unwittingly does to hurt their child, and the deeper worry that it might be deliberate. For Scott Morgan, the work projects the need to protect our children from monsters, and the
La Leocadia (the seductress), Francisco Goya
heartbreak at discovering that you may be one of those monsters yourself. Goya’s black paintings are the fruits of the incredible mind of a genius artist, but more than that as a Christian himself they reveal a small man in the face of his God, and an imperfect sinner.
The Pinturas Negras are considered by many to be mysterious and strange, and they remain unexplained by the artist himself. However, one way to interpret the works is as an attempt by Goya to make sense of the horrors he had witnessed and rationalize his world. In doing so, it can be said that Goya’s black paintings exist in the intersection of these two predominant and competing mythologies: Christian ideals of sin and man’s imperfection, and the Greco -Roman view of petty, imperfect gods, and an unforgiving world that humanity is at the mercy of.
Bibliography
Alford, R. (1960) ‘Francisco Goya and the Intentions of the Artist’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 18.4: 482 – 93 Glendinning, N. (1975) ‘The Strange Translation of Goya’s “Black Paintings”’, The Burlington Magazine 117.868: 465 – 79 Hofmann, W. (2003) Goya: To every story there belongs another . London Posèq, A. (1999) ‘The Goat in Goya’s Witches’ Sabbaths’ , Notes in the History of Art 18.4: 30 – 39 Scott Morgan, J. (2001) ‘The Mystery of Goya’s “Saturn”’, New England Review 22.3: 39 – 43. Tomlinson A. (1994) Francisco Goya y Lucientes , 1746-1828. London Vega, J. (1994) ‘The Dating and Interpretation of Goya’s Disasters of War ’ , Print Quarterly 11.1: 3 – 17
8 Glendinning 1975. 9 Morgan 2001: 43.
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